


Forever

by amazinga



Series: Gay Murder Family [1]
Category: Watchmen (2009), Watchmen (Comic)
Genre: First Person, Fuck Canon, Love, M/M, Murder Husbands, One Shot, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:01:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24755971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amazinga/pseuds/amazinga
Summary: What if Rorschach and Daniel had been married? What if they had stayed together after the Roche case, and after the Keene Act? Here's a slice of life one shot exploring that premise.
Relationships: Dan Dreiberg/Rorschach
Series: Gay Murder Family [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1790440
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	Forever

“Hi, Honey, I'm home,” Rorschach deadpanned. The wind whipped fiercely, swirling dry brown leaves around his feet and threatening to slam the door shut. It was late fall, almost winter. The year was 1984, and we'd been married for eleven of the nineteen years we'd known each other.

“Close the door,” I said to him. “You're letting the heat out.” I just wanted him out of the cold. He pretended not to feel the elements, but I knew better. I'd saved him from frostbite _and_ heatstroke back when we were partners – the other kind of partners.

As he stepped into the hall, I noticed he had blood on his trench. It had been clean when he'd left that evening around sunset. “I hope that's not yours,” I said, pointing to the blood.

“You know it isn't, Daniel,” he said to me. I didn't want to know _whose_ it was.

I tolerated what he was doing. I did not approve of it. There was a part of me – perhaps the part of me that still secretly wanted to be Nite Owl – that championed him. What he was doing was righteous, I knew that. I had seen the worst evils of which men were capable, and I'd seen Rorschach cut those men down. Nite Owl had seen those men cut down. In the worst of cases, Nite Owl had _helped,_ though he had not laid a finger on anybody.

But I was not Nite Owl any more. I was a law abiding citizen, and what Rorschach was doing was unlawful. So I looked the other way. I let him out to do what needed to be done, like setting a cat free to hunt, and he roamed the streets while I wrote, living vicariously through the pen, letting my violence out onto the page with drops of ink spilling around my words like his face. On weekends I sat and drank with Hollis. He could not approve of what Rorschach was doing any more than I could, but he was my father, and Rorschach was my husband. We were family. Nothing could separate us.

“You're not bleeding at all, are you? Under there? Or – or hurt, or anything?” I always worried. Worried that tonight would be the night he wouldn't come home. Worried he would come home missing an eye or with a bullet still lodged in him.

“Fine. A little bruised.” He shucked off the bloody coat. I could see his suit was unmarred, if rumpled. “Think I need a bath.”

So I ran a bath for him. I'd renovated the bathroom a few years ago when I was looking for something to do, and the bathtub I'd finally installed after years without one was large enough for both of us. We often took baths together. Sometimes the blood on him _was_ his, just from cuts and scrapes, and I had to wash it away. Sometimes he fell asleep in my arms, sometimes I in his.

As he climbed into the tub, I noticed the bruises on his pale body. They were mostly fresh. Whoever he had been with tonight had fought back. I had no doubt it was in vain.

“Daniel?” He removed his face, and I saw the ghost of a man I'd known years ago, all freckles and deceptively innocent wide eyes. “Can you wash my hair?”

I'd always been jealous of his hair, and it had gotten worse since mine had started to thin and gray. His was still that exotic shade of red, as thick and lustrous as ever. Such beautiful hair had its downsides, as all things do. It tangled easily, and had the tendency to become greasy. After a few hours under the mask, it was always a nightmare. I shampooed it, then applied a liberal amount of conditioner in order to work out the tangles.

“Do you want me to wash the rest of you?” I asked him when I was done. He nodded. His eyes were closed.

Bathing had always been a kind of foreplay for us. _Always._ That is, even before we were lovers, we used to wash each other after patrol. Not every time, but sometimes, when we were particularly sweaty, or had come into contact with something that needed to be washed off. We had never touched each other below the waist then. I'd considered asking him if he wanted to jerk off together, but I thought he'd punch me. So he'd slink off home to play with his hairbrush while I headed to my room with a tube of lotion, and that's the way it had stayed for years.

I smiled as I caressed the contours of his muscular body with my soapy hands, thinking of how excited (and astonished!) my young self would have been if he'd been where I was now.

“Do you need to eat?” I asked as I dried him. I'm sure we both wanted to get to the bedroom as soon as possible, but it was my responsibility to make sure he ate food that was hot and not from a can.

“Already ate,” he said. “Gunga Diner.”

They knew him there. They knew _us_ too – me and my little ginger ghost, walking around during the day like normal human beings. It seemed unlikely they would ever make the connection, but if they did, it's not like they'd tell anyone. We'd stopped a potentially lethal armed robbery there the year they'd opened. Rorschach was still a hero to them, no matter what the police or the tabloids said about him. They let him eat for free. I always tipped them a little extra to try and even things out. I could afford it. (The coffee was shit, but that was beside the point.)

The wind continued to howl outside, but we were safe in our brownstone fortress as we ascended the stairs. Our house had an odd layout. It was tall and narrow, with the bathroom sandwiched vertically between the bedroom and living area. I carried Rorschach in my arms as I had done on our wedding night – I was retired, but I was not a weak man, and he was always going to be light thanks to his small frame.

“Are you ready for me?” I asked. We had not bothered dressing.

“Always,” he said.

I slicked myself up, and he climbed on top of me, ready to take his pleasure. Rorschach was a selfish lover, but not a lazy one. All he needed was my hands on his hips and a few words of encouragement. This was an arrangement that suited me just fine.

Walter had been the opposite – incredibly giving, but timid and in need of constant guidance. His favorite thing was to be fucked on his back, freckled face half hidden in his hands as he begged me for more and asked if it was good. As he'd started at me with those innocent eyes, peering through his fingers, I'd realized he was my first real love. These days, I wasn't sure Walter had ever really existed. Perhaps he had always been a ghost.

But not Rorschach. Rorschach was as real as he felt now, under my hands and around my cock, and I knew he was, and had always been, and would always be mine.

Forever.

**Author's Note:**

> So... who wants to read about their wedding night?


End file.
